With the pressure on to avoid a training camp holdout, the Blackhawks reached contract terms with Dylan Strome just in time Sunday.
The Hawks signed Strome to a two-year contract with a $3 million cap hit, ending his nearly three-month stretch as a restricted free agent.
Strome has been in Chicago for weeks, fulfilling his quarantine requirements in case a scenario like this transpired, and will be with the team for the first on-ice practice session Monday morning at Fifth Third Arena.
“We believe Dylan is ready to take the next step in his career and build off the strides he has made in his first two years in Chicago,” general manager Stan Bowman said in a statement.
“He has great offensive instincts and brings creativity and skill to our team. We are thrilled he is now signed and able to join us tomorrow for the start of training camp.”
His presence will be absolutely vital for a forward group that has lost Jonathan Toews, Kirby Dach and Alex Nylander all to long-term injuries or illnesses within the past few weeks.
Strome, 23, may well be the first-line center for the Jan. 13 regular season opener. He’ll compete in camp with a strange, crowded center group — offseason additions Carl Soderberg, Mattias Janmark and Lucas Wallmark; returning fourth-liners Ryan Carpenter and David Kampf; now-healthy veterans Andrew Shaw and Zack Smith; and prospect Philipp Kurashev — for the job.
Strome has scored 51 and 38 points, respectively, in 58 games played each of his two seasons with the Hawks, ranking fifth on the team both years.
His chemistry with former juniors linemate Alex DeBrincat and crafty passing skills quickly elevated his reputation from draft bust in Arizona to integral young core member in Chicago.
But he struggled down the stretch of the 2019-20 regular season and playoffs, later admitting he’d returned from a January 2020 ankle injury too quickly.
That poor finish and the league-wide impacts of the flattened salary cap, which squashed many free agents’ potential earnings, put Strome in a low-leverage position this offseason. Strome’s longtime former agent then left the hockey industry in November, further complicating matters.
Bowman and Strome’s new agent, Pat Morris, began relatively frequent and intense negotiations a few weeks ago, with both expressing cautious optimism they’d eventually come to terms. It took as long as it possibly could have, but their optimism was proved worthwhile Sunday.
The two-year contract term represents a so-called “bridge deal,” which will keep Strome a restricted free agent when it expires in 2022. The cap should be rising again by then, so Strome will have the potential to cash in with a large deal if his production remains top-six level over the next two seasons.
On the other hand, the $3 million cap hit in the meantime won’t greatly handicap the Hawks, who currently own plenty of space with Toews on long-term injured reserve but will abruptly revert back to a cap-ceiling team when their captain and his $10.5 million cap hit returns.
What was a surprisingly populated free agent market around the NHL when the 2021 season was announced Dec. 20 has dwindled significantly since, but there are still some RFA holdouts to monitor on other teams.
Mathew Barzal (Islanders), Jack Roslovic (Jets), Jesper Bratt (Devils) and Luke Kunin (Predators) all scored 29 or more points last year — Barzal led the Isles with 60 — but remain RFAs without contracts right now.
